


Identity

by Willowanderer



Series: Gratuitous Reincarnation fics [9]
Category: Assassin's Creed
Genre: Alternate Universe - Reincarnation, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-04-28
Updated: 2013-04-28
Packaged: 2017-12-09 19:48:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 409
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/777333
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Willowanderer/pseuds/Willowanderer
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It's hard to be yourself when you don't know who that is.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Identity

Sometimes it felt like her head would split in two, trying to be what people wanted her to be- and that was without even trying to figure out who she wanted to be. She wanted to run wild and climb trees and get into fights. She wanted to stay out late and catch fireflies in open fields. She wanted to kiss boys and make them cry. She wanted a chance to not only be the princess, but to be the prince, too.

But what her father and stepmother needed her to be was neat, sweet, and ever so polite. A charming doll to the business partners as they traveled the world. They didn't phrase it that way, they didn't mean it that way, her father more than willing to show her how the business was run, and accept her help with sorting papers, but she ached to move. When they lived in Singapore, she was twelve, and when her father started to take blame for things disappearing from the warehouse he was inventoriying, she took it upon herself to catch the real theif, tracking down stolen objects in places she wans't supposed to be, picking up slang for words she shouldn't even know in her native tounge. And she caught the theif; a ten year old boy with ribs like a dying dog, and it was her stepmother who found a way to help him and save her father's job. She was grounded by being sent to a boarding school where she learned deportment, and manners and was asked to leave after a single term. Her stepmother told her then that it didn't matter who she was in private, but in public, she could be nothing less than perfect, because that was what the world demanded of them.

 

So she separated herself, the rough and tumble tomboy hid her hair up in caps, and the good little girl had her hair straightened, then re-curled. She separated them with posture and clothes and methods of speech. She separated them with stolen hours, and lies about friends that didn't exist. She kept them apart with locked boxes. When she discovered she liked girls as much as boys, that split down the middle too. Looking at pictures of them both- portraits of the businessman’s daughter, snapshots of the street hockey player- she could hardly tell they were the same person.

 

And the worst part was, neither of them felt like her either.


End file.
